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Thursday, August 03, 2006

Not everyone is Kansas is an idiot

Not everyone in Kansas is an idiot as the following proves. Though the town of Meade, see previous post, has more than its share of them.

You may remember that fundamentalist Christian theocrats had taken control of the Kansas State Board of Education. They immediately wrote a new policy that effectively tarred and feathered science and rode it out of town on a rail. They called their creationism light by the label "intelligent design" and it became a mantra for the new conservatives in place of the old principles of limited government.

Now the ID movement has suffered some defeats. They got the Dover, Pennsylvannia town council to implement their theology as science only to see the Republican dominated town vote overwhelmingly for Democrats to throw the fundies out of office. Remember these were Republican voters that did it.

Now in Kansas the battle shifted to the Republican primary. The theocrats on the Board were Republicans since it is the GOP which the fundamentalists have targeted for a take over. This time they faced the opposition of other Republicans tired of having their party dominated by the American version of the Taliban. In the primary four theocrats were seeking to be renominted by the GOP. Two of them lost their nomination to moderate Republicans and won't serve another term. This ends the fundamentalist domination of the Board of Education and guarantees a majority pledged to repealing the anti-evolution, anti-science policies of the previous members. And this time, being a primary race, the only voters were Republicans.

Hopefully Republicans are seeing the looming disaster for their party after they sought power on the back of intolerant fundamentalists. If Republicans throw out the neocon/theocon alliance and Democrats do the same with their extreme Left special interest groups the voters would benefit.

The bad news in Kansas is that few people pay attention to the Board of Education making it easy for fundamentalists to take power when voters are not vigilant. In 1999 they took over and all but banned evolution. The publicity of that move meant that two years later they were voted out of office. Then in 2004 they took over again during a lull in attention and once again substituted theology for science. And now they get voted out again. But the fundamentalists have long followed a stategy of stealth campaigns so don't assume they out for good.